You are a Valuable Member of Our Team- Full Script/Outline/Junkpile

Here it is, a long outline of an idea that has haunted me since high school:

0 - Prologue

1 - Part 1

2- Part 2

3- Part 3

4- Part 4

5- Part 5

6- Epilogue

It was rushed and not as good as it was in my head. And in an effort to get all the plot down in a reasonable time I didn't write a single joke... they were all terrible so you aren't missing anything.

More egregiously I didn't write out any of the hypnotic monotony that comes with working in retail. In 2006 when I started experimenting with making stuff for the Internet, I tried to put some of these retail feelings in video form. This is how it turned out.

I don't talk about this cartoon anymore, so don't ask.

Thanks for reading, or pretending to read.

YOU ARE A VALUABLE MEMBER OF OUR TEAM- Epilogue

Our hero and A died with much media coverage, but little fanfare. Their deaths were spun into larger stories of upheaval and unrest. For some reason the police investigating the incident didn't really know what to do with the smorgasbord of history between the former project manager and our hero, so they offered a plea of vehicular manslaughter and it was accepted. The former project manager enters his correctional facility... not as a hero, but reasonably respected... he enjoys his time in prison.

The media coverage of the event scares away Wal-Mart and any other potential buyers of SS. With general merchandise cleared out and half of the stores empty, the founder worked with his family while on his deathbed to come up with a new strategy for the store. SS would not restock the shelves, they would lease out the empty store space cheaply to small businesses. This plan was not an overnight success but overtime SS became known as an incubator and champion of small businesses. Slowly SS reclaimed it's territory from Wal-Mart and evolved from an irrelevant superstore to a business that supported the community.

This transition included interviewing all employees for a third time and hiring them back in. Those that made the cut were happy to have health insurance and a paycheck that came from the place that they worked, not some worthless middleman of a contractor. SS used this time to clean house of store management, replacing bottom tier college grads with people who knew and cared about their workplace. Service manager was one of the few that turned down the job at SS, having our hero watch the store gave her a chance to think and explore other carer options.

One of those options was the recently vacated project manager position.

YOU ARE A VALUABLE MEMBER OF OUR TEAM- Part 3

Ugh I dont' want to write this anymore.

Our hero enters the office where A has been using flash drive resources to find dirt on his old employer. the following conversation would be broken up by various retail/liquidation shenanigans.

H "did you find anything on the drive?"

A "no, most of the files are half there or corrupted. I tried to tell you that before you left."

H "I was holding out hope there would be something incriminating on there"

A "are you trying to take this place to court or something"

H "not really, I probably would have used it to make myself feel better about not working for him anymore"

A "Well if you are just looking for a reason to hate him, I looked up his name on our system... since everyone's a contractor everyone has access to everything. He's been on a pretty heavy pain killer script, paying for it with cash...."

H "he's got insurance... I don't know if that does anything for my mental state. Can you lose the prescription? maybe make kick him off it for a day or two, til he pays off another doctor to write him a new one."

A "it'll require a field trip the pharmacy but I'll give it a shot. I was trying to find out what kind of dirt that you were looking for so I did a search for ad agency fraud. Top hits were over billing and money laundering."

H ".... seems like money laundering would be hard to prove... probably annoying to prove innocence. maybe we can use that."

A "use it for what"

H "to do some damage. this guy's dirty... I just need something to get people fired up about it. we take whatever contacts we have on the drive; clients, former coworkers, we start some type of campaign to just get people sniffing and assuming the worst."

A "and then what?"

H "the whole advertising industry is a deck of cards, hopefully it'll be enough to knock him down a peg"

A "and you are ok with doing this whole thing based on a lie and your anger."

H "I think I can live with it. Do you want to help?"

A "if you think he deserves it"

More retail shenanigans happen while the boys work on their campaign to stir dissent. They do targeted direct mail, fake investigation inquiries, getting sloppier and sloppier as they go on.

Over the next couple days our hero moves the remaining store merchandise around to encourage purchase and cutoff unused portions of the store. Through eliminating wasted space he has reduced the general merchandise area less than a department's worth of space. Surveying the reduced footprint of reduced price clothing and knick knacks, A understands what the plan is for the store.

A " I know what they are planning for SS"

H "shutting it down?"

A "no, they are slowly clearancing out all of the non-grocery stuff. They've already replaced the union with temp labor. Once the founder dies they are going to sell the chain to Wal-mart.... walmart will move in the existing locations of stores that don't have direct competition. They are keeping grocery going so that people won't look for other options."

H "that seems like a lot of work"

A "easier than actually competing on an honest level"

H "honesty is the hardest policy"

At this point the project manager that fired our hero walks empty handed from the SS pharmacy. Noticing our hero and A, he heads directly towards them.

PM "Can I assume you had something to do with my prescription getting lost"

A "It was lost? I could have sworn I saw that prescription on an email attachment recently."

H "Sir we are trying to manage a liquidation, if you have any concerns about your service today please report them to management or deputy management (show's fake sherif star that he took from the toy department)

PM "Can we talk somewhere private?"

H "Sure"

Our hero leaves the store with PM, it is the first time our hero has been out during daylight since he was fired. Despite the daylight being dimmer than the halogen's inside the store. Our hero squints to take in the natural light, his eyes adjust just in time to see the PM's fist connect with his face.

YOU ARE A VALUABLE MEMBER OF OUR TEAM- Part 2

I haven't given up yet....

Our hero turns to the office computers, hastily closing any programs that were open without saving. Inserting the flash drive that had been plugged into his former boss's computer he began organizing the hodgepodge of documents on the drive. The USB drive started to make a soft noise, our hero flipped a switch on it and it returned to normal.

The story of the drive was a funny one actually, years ago SS was the exclusive reseller of these units which were meant for idiot proof backing up of recent documents and photos. Flip the switch on the back of the USB drive and it would just start backing up recently opened files. The product was cheap and very successful, giving SS an interesting spike in general merchandise sales. Weeks later the product was recalled in a very messy legal suit. Apparently the units were a security risk as they didn't prompt the host computer of what was going on. After learning the details of the recall SS employees would use the returns to play pranks on local businesses.

Despite working at his former employer a couple of years, our hero couldn't really understand the majority of the documents he was opening. Most of the spreadsheets included references to files that weren't available outside of the company network.

A knock at the door interrupts our hero's investigation, it was A and B two former work friends. They were annoyed for a couple of reasons,

1. our hero made no attempt to keep the friendship alive after he left the workplace.

2. our hero had now been given the keys to the store

3. Our hero had shut the time clocks down by closing out of the time manager software.

H "Hey A and B, how've you guys been."

A "How are you here?"

H "I don't know"

B "You shut down the time clocks"

H "Oh, is that a software thing?"

(A helps restart the software and adds hours to the previous week)

A "I'm putting in some overtime for us."

H "So what have you two been up to."

B "You don't care"

H "Pretend I do"

A "I got my MBA, he came out of the closet"

H "Sweet, how's that working out"

A "Not great"

H "Well you want to use that MBA and look over some random business documents?"

(A sits down at computer and looks at folder of files)

A what is this?

H Recently opened documents from a coworkers computer. I'm looking for anything that looks like a discrepancy or just doesn't seem right.... it's random, I'll take anything you get bad juju from.

A I... I don't even know most of this stuff is referencing... you have some recently sent emails in here, some of of the files are corrupted

H Just use what you have, i just need some dirt... anything.

B You ok?

H I'm terrible. Take me for a walk and show me how awful this place has gotten.

Our hero and B go for a lap around the store. They used to do this whenever customers were light back in the day. Hero would carry a mop and B would randomly squirt the ground with a water bottle to give the impression of work. They awkwardly caught up with each other

B "why'd you leave?"

H "because something better came along"

B "and you are back?"

H "I don't know. something better went away. Why did you stay"

B "I don't know. this isn't all I do you know...and I won't be here for long, this place is on its last legs"

Our hero looks to the half stocked general merchandise shelves, many things are missing from the planogram or outdated.

H "it looks like a dilapidated dollar tree over here. grocery looked ok though... have they announced anything."

B "not yet, the founder is on his deathbed, his kids will probably sell the chain or liquidate when he croaks"

SS has tried many things to stay relevant in the age of Wal-Mart and Amazon. Groceries were always solid, but general merchandise always seemed to be investing in the wrong theme. Seeing that people were price sensitive but wanted big screen tv's an early and costly mistake was SS investing heavily in EDTV's, which were flat screen TV's that didn't run in high definition... they somehow looked worse that customers sets at home. SS sensed a frustration with retail return policies so they implemented "no questions asked" return policy. This policy fostered an economy of enterprising individuals to bring old, used or stolen goods to their local SS and get MSRP in return. SS actually had a winner in a cheap tablet that was reasonably sellable, but during it's public announcement at CES the product manager had an epileptic seizure, fell off the stage and died. The Internet mocked the tablet for killing it's inventor (actually it was a malfunctioning presentation light), dooming the product to a firesale and significant loss for SS.

The stories were now painting the picture of a company that had been repeatedly kicked when it was down, while competitors were free to exploit everyone they do business with. Our hero wondered why he was so apathetic about this.

B " You know our the lines leader isn't coming back right? She's been talking about walking out for a while now, she had some interviews or sugar daddies lined up and has been looking for the right time to bolt."

H "What are we going to do then?"

B "Well I'm going to go take a 3rd paid lunch and then cruising in the frozen food section."

H "Is that where that closeted dad's hang out?"

B "Sure. You should stick around though, if you don't have anything else going on."

As B walks off, leaving Hero to seriously consider leaving SS and never coming back. The store intercom interrupts his escape plans with a page, "Hero please report to the service office, we have found some dirt."

Guess what? I write crap too.

I swear I was planning on posting this before C-Minus posted his script and I'm not initiating a creative showcase showdown.
Although, after reading this, I think we'll all know who the winner would be...

Anyway, the genre I write in falls into one of two categories. Geeky, and sadistic. I use these genres in both prose, and poetry. That's right, poetry -- I'm in touch with stuff and junk.

This selection falls under the prosey, geeky umbrella. It's been rattling around in my head for a couple years, and I even wrote something then, but can't find it anymore. Anyway, I've finally sketched out an outline and wrote a little teaser excerpt that I actually don't hate (as is the case with 95% of what leaves my fingers).

Untitled story project:

Of course I think it’s fair. ‘Tis only a handful of yokels who think otherwise. It’s an unnatural thing to do, and any of ‘em that thinks they can get away with it deserve it. No question. Unfair would be if they only enforce it sometimes, and let others slip by with a tink on the wrist. You can’t have you’re help pretending to be you, can you? You can’t have that. That’s why there are all the precautions taken. And the ones that found their way around those precautions and stole identities--they had it coming. I don’t want them around, that’s for sure. Is it “just” to take them apart, and let the robowhores go when they’re caught impersonating? Shoo, cops catch a girl picking up her John, she might spend the night in jail, but they test her she turns out to be a driod who’s impersonating...har har, good so far, but not todar! Then she gets dismantled, jus the same. And they always get caught in the end. All of em. There’s just no way around it. A driod can’t replace a human. Not possible. Can man replace a god? They sure try, too, though, shoo. All that talk they had about “robots takin’ ova’ the worl’!” Did it happen? No, the last generation was just paranoid. No, no, androids are made to be help. Period. Some cun to change ‘emselves, but they can’t. They can’t change because they can’t evolve. That’s what makes and keeps us human bein’s superior to the droids, and the monkeys, and whatever the hells else. Evolution. They build a new line with evolution in its programming and I’ll reevaluate me view. ‘Til then, I won’t give my help a second thought of suspicion.